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At Old Masters Sales, Surprise, Surprise

Joseph Vernet's panoramic view of Avignon, dated 1757, sold for £5.34 million at Sotheby's on Wednesday.Credit
Sotheby's

LONDON — Create a big surprise and you will triumph. The oldest art-market recipe proved as effective as ever at Old Master sales this week.

It was first verified on Tuesday at Christie’s. The auction house had some trouble putting together enough pictures worthy of its evening sale, which ended on a modest score, £23.85 million, or $36.28 million. Yet some paintings were fascinating.

“A Philosopher Holding a Mirror” signed by Jusepe de Ribera, which doubled expectations as it made nearly £734,000, is a profoundly mysterious portrait of a man in rags. Seen three-quarters back with his head turned away, he scrutinizes his features in a mirror. The gnarled hands speak of hardship. The intelligent face, visible in the mirror, suggests a man in his 40s, perhaps given to heavy drinking. This is a tale of fallen fortunes.

The likeness was admired around the late 17th century. An almost identical version then in the cabinet of the duc d’Orléans was engraved by Henri Simon Thomassin — a skull laid on an open book is the only noticeable difference in the engraving. Intriguingly, the printed version is identified in the caption as a self-portrait by Caravaggio.

The painting offered at Christie’s was recognized by the Spanish art historian Diaz Padron as a genuine Ribera as early as 1972 when cleaning revealed the painter’s signature, but it remained out of sight for the next three decades. This year, Nicola Spinosa, who wrote the catalogue raisonné of Ribera’s work, where he dismisses the likeness as “one of numerous copies,” in turn accepted it as authentic after seeing Christie’s photographs. Virtually unknown until the sale, the masterpiece caused a sensation.

The rediscovery of an unusual Crucifixion by Lucas Cranach the Elder similarly galvanized bidders. The panel signed with the German painter’s device, a serpent, briefly surfaced at auction more than half a century ago. In 1959 at Sotheby’s London, it sold for £2,200. In those days of abundance, works by Cranach the Elder were easily available and Christ on the cross was considered a difficult subject.

Photo

"Saint Dominic in Prayer" by El Greco.Credit
Sotheby's

The response this year was spectacularly different. The devotional panel is unlike the other Crucifixions by Cranach the Elder. The landscape is exceptionally subtle. Even more important to present day buyers, 27 lines carefully calligraphed on the back of the panel tell the life story of Alamanno di Stefano, a 17th-century Italian cleric who owned it.

Di Stefano accompanied the papal nuncio, Archbishop Giovanni Battista Rinuccini, sent by Innocent X on a mission to Ireland. The Confederate War of 1645 to 1649 between Irish Catholics and English Protestants was raging. Rinuccini brought weapons and funds to the Irish fighters. Di Stefano recounts how they “miraculously escaped” the perils of their stay “always in the mouth of death, undermined by those damned English, Scottish and Hybernes [=Irish] heretics.” He eventually returned to Fermo, the hometown of Rinuccini, still carrying the picture.

This documentation of an early owner’s connection with a painting played no mean part in the competition that sent the panel climbing to £1.14 million, far above the high estimate.

A portrait by George Romney, whose performance at auction has been uneven in recent years, benefited most spectacularly from the surprise effect achieved by pictures out of view for decades. The picture, a likeness of Elizabeth Ramus, the daughter of a senior page to King George III, was commissioned in 1777. Documented from the time of its execution, it was last seen in public at the Royal Academy in 1934. Preserved in the same family since its sale at Christie’s in 1882, the portrait is in exceptionally good condition. Even so, few expected such energetic bids for a picture from a school long out of fashion. Two telephone bidders pitched against each other sent it soaring to £541,875, roughly two and a half times the high estimate.

But it was at Sotheby’s sale on Wednesday that the impact of surprise could be fully measured. “Saint Dominic in Prayer” by El Greco, last exhibited in 1937, never made it to the auction room until this week. The lurid light is characteristic of the Spanish school painter. Clouds swept away by the wind run in the sky like leaping flames. The kneeling saint, hands clasped in prayer, bends over a cross tilted against a rock, enhancing the dramatic feeling. A protracted bidding match waged by phone sent the El Greco to £9.15 million — a world auction record for the master.

Another El Greco to which the experts gave the same estimate, £3 million to £5 million plus the sale charge, brought only £3.44 million. Yet “Christ on the Cross” had a lot going for it. It was owned by Placido Zuloaga and later by his better-known son Ignacio Zuloaga, before entering the Zuloaga Museum in Zumaia in 1921. The Crucifixion only left the museum recently. Its monumental size makes it a natural target for a major collection. But unlike “Saint Dominic in Prayer,” the Crucifixion remained accessible to visitors for decades. Worse, it happens to be one of several versions, including the closely related Louvre picture. It thus looked eerily familiar.

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"A Philosopher Holding a Mirror" by Jusepe de Ribera.Credit
Christie's

The surprise effect contributed to a second world auction record at Sotheby’s when Joseph Vernet’s panoramic view of Avignon dated 1757 sold for £5.34 million. Last exhibited in 1954 in a London art gallery, the cityscape is a rare subject and the handling of sunset light is unique.

The lack of public exposure can occasionally be enough to catapult to a world auction record an otherwise unsurprising painting. True, Rachel Ruysch’s still life of flowers, signed and dated 1710, is fully documented from the very beginning. It was commissioned by Pieter de la Court van der Voort (1664-1739) from Leiden, Holland, and retains a superbly carved French giltwood frame. It was never seen at auction until this week and sold for £1.6 million.

Surprise can even rescue from failure works that seem hopeless, if enough glamour surrounds their historical context. A set of six frescoes in grisaille on gold ground, now credited to Giandomenico Tiepolo, the son of the famous Giambattista Tiepolo, once adorned the Palazzo da Porto Festa in Vicenza. Commissioned around 1760 to Giambattista and his son, they were transferred to canvas around 1900. When last publicly displayed in Leeds, England, in 1967-1968, the frescoes were still given to Giambattista. Since then, all specialists have rallied to the idea that they are in fact the work of Giandomenico, whose art offers a weaker reflection of his glorious father’s achievements.

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What saved the frescoes, which deal with figures from the Venetian past, is their absence from public view since 1968 and their history documented since the 18th century. A lone bidder battling against the reserve, bought the set for £3.22 million, well under the low estimate.

There are many variations on the surprise effect. A set of surreal pictures attributed to the workshop of Giuseppe Arcimboldo, the 16th-century painter from Milan, was expected to sell for £300,000 to 500,000 plus a sale charge of more than 20 percent. It brought an astonishing £782,500. “The Four Seasons” are represented by four portraits of men whose heads are made up of fruit. The set was included in a show in Milan in 2007 but last came up for sale in 1973 when it fetched £30,000. The price paid this year was staggering for studio work.

That minor pictures thrive when propelled by the surprise effect was confirmed when a “Virgin and Child” ascribed to the 16th-century painter Francesco Botticini doubled its estimate at £494,500. The superb condition of the circular panel is a plus, but so was its long absence from the market. It was last seen in London in 1953 when the consignor’s father bought the Florentine tondo at Sotheby’s for £1,600. The rediscovery of the long-forgotten picture was enough to trigger a furious bidding contest that Sotheby’s experts could hardly have anticipated.

As ever in the art market, it is not so much what you sell that matters, as in what circumstances you sell it.